


Food of the four nations: introduction

by clockwork_fire



Series: Food of the four nations [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Avatar: The Last Airbender References, Bending (Avatar), Food, Gen, Lore - Freeform, Worldbuilding, culture and food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockwork_fire/pseuds/clockwork_fire
Summary: This is a simple piece of writing with a simple purpose. I am here for one reason and that reason is to answer the ever burning question: what did the people of Avatar eat? Come with me on a journey where we will look at food, cooking, staple crops, and trade routs and the cultural significance that those things can have. Join me, a dumb white girl with too much time on my hands, explore the cuisine of an entirely Asian inspired fictional universe with the confidence of a professional anthropologist. This was neither needed or asked for but exists regardless.
Series: Food of the four nations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576321
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Food of the four nations: introduction

**Author's Note:**

> There is no reason for any of this except for the fact that I love food and love learning about food. This is simply a passion project spawned from my need to understand cooking, and yes, I am writing this instead of learning how to cook. Please message me if you have ideas on anything I put here, questions about sources, or if you love food as much as I do.

Avatar: the Last Airbender was, and is a show that had a tremendous amount of influence on many of our childhoods with its rich and vibrant worldbuilding and, in my opinion, one of the greatest hard magic systems in western media. As many fans got older, questions began to arrive. Questions such as “what are the avatar’s origins?”, “what forms of sub bending could be possible?”, and the ever important “when will these shipping wars end?”. I would like to take you, dear reader, on a journey to answer one question and one question alone.   
What did people eat?  
Admittedly, the only person asking this question is me but the importance of food and culture is more important than mass appeal. On this evening I am beginning my journey into food and festivities with one scene in one episode.   
In season 1 episode 3 “the southern air temple”, we see a flashback of the air bending monks making a fruit pastry which, according to the avatar wiki, is an egg custard tart filled with minced fruit. The tart is also topped with what appears to be a mousse or whipped cream. This simple scene displays no emphasis on the food itself and ends with several monks getting pied in the face with these confections. So why does this matter? What can this tell us?  
An egg custard is an incredibly simple dessert. The only necessary ingredients are eggs, milk, and sugar. Those ingredients are chemically essential in creating an edible egg custard according to this article here https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150930-the-curious-chemistry-of-custard. We all know that the air nomads are strict vegetarians who live on mountaintops, however, we as the audience only see the temples that the monks lived in. The Wikipedia page tells us that the air nomads cultivated their own crops so one can assume that they used a form of terrace farming. The question is, did they keep animals? Certain crops like rice and soy are able to be plowed and harvested without the aid of machinery or animals. Most vegetables that thrive in mountainous regions are small enough to be harvested by hand. If the air nomads kept their own cows and chickens, then those animals would have been used for only eggs and milk which seems like an unnecessary use of resources. A slightly more likely candidate would be the humble goose, whose eggs are able to be a baking substitute for the typical chicken egg. Raising geese also gives one the benefit of acquiring down feathers which are the wonderful magic behind poofy winter coats. According to The Responsible Down Standard (RDS), states that the only way to ethically collect down is post Morten. There are methods that can be used to collect feathers while the bird is still alive, but those are painful and stressful for the animal ( note: most sources on this issue come from PETA). Of course, this all hinges on the assumption that the air nomads believe in keeping animals when there isn’t even evidence that the sky bisons have stables. The bison seem to be more along the lines of symbiotic companions rather than pets. Either way this was a very long winded way of saying that I think that the air nomads trade with the earth kingdom to get eggs and milk and this whole paragraph was useless fluff.   
Sorry about that.   
The last ingredient in the custard itself is sugar. Sugar cane is a plant that thrives in a tropical or subtropical environment. This would primarily mean the fire nation and the center earth kingdom coasts. I would say the center belt of the earth kingdom, but sugarcane requires a good amount of water so the si wong desert presents an obstacle. The closest air nomad land to that equator would be the western and the eastern air temples, however those areas that we’ve seen appear to be temperate climates, so it’s not entirely unlikely that they either trade for sugar, or grow it themselves on land closest to the equator. I’m less concerned with whether or not the air nomads grow their own sugar and more focused on the fact that this simple dessert establishes the existence of sugar in the Avatar universe as this opens up a whole new realm of food options.   
All of this information can be assumed from the existence of a three ingredient dessert that was shown in a minute long clip in one episode of a show that spans four nations, three seasons, and one pie and we haven’t even gotten to the crust.


End file.
